The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users. One such delivery technique that has shown promise is Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB). In this regard, DVB-T, which is related to DVB-C (cable) and DVB-S (satellite), is the terrestrial variant of the DVB standard. As is well known, DVB-T is a wireless point-to-multipoint data delivery mechanism developed for digital TV broadcasting, and is based on the MPEG-2 transport stream for the transmission of video and synchronized audio. DVB-T has the capability of efficiently transmitting large amounts of data over a broadcast channel to a high number of users at a lower cost, when compared to data transmission through mobile telecommunication networks using, e.g., 3G systems. Advantageously, DVB-T has also proven to be exceptionally robust in that it provides increased performance in geographic conditions that would normally affect other types of transmissions, such as the rapid changes of reception conditions, and hilly and mountainous terrain. On the other hand, DVB-H (handheld), which is also related to DVB-T, can provide increased performance particularly for wireless data delivery to handheld devices.
As evidenced by DVB, digital broadband data broadcast networks are known. In this regard DVB networks enjoy popularity in Europe and elsewhere for the delivery of television content as well as the delivery of other data, such as Internet Protocol (IP) data. Other examples of broadband data broadcast networks include Japanese Terrestrial Integrated Service Digital Broadcasting (ISDB-T), Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), and Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (3GPP MBMS, 3GPP2 BCMCS), and those networks provided by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC).
In many such systems, program guides have been developed to deliver services to users over the digital broadband data broadcast networks. Multicast and Broadcast Service (MCBCS) allows users to receive a variety of content (e.g. video/text) via mobile terminals in a wireless network. Other similar services are being developed for Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), for example. Users may subscribe to MCBCS service, in which a controller responds to user requests for content information over an IP network. A user selects desired content via the MCBCS program guide at their mobile terminals. The controller may then authenticate the user's request and provide the selected content if appropriately authenticated.
Meanwhile, WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), is an exemplary telecommunications technology that has been developed for providing communication of wireless data over long distances in a variety of ways, such as point-to-point links or full mobile cellular type access. WiMAX is based on the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 802.16 standard. WiMAX is generally touted as enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL (digital subscriber line). WiMAX may be an alternative means of increasing bandwidth for a variety of data-intensive applications such as digital video broadcasting (DVB). As such, for example, efforts have been made to provide broadcast support for WiMAX technology.
In WiMAX architecture, a wireless ASN may be coupled to base stations that wirelessly communicate data to mobile terminals via an ASN gateway (ASN-GW). FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional ASN architecture using IP unicast transport for the logical interconnection between the ASN-GW and base stations. Thus, the “last hop” to the base stations is handled via unicast. The communication interface between a ASN-GW and a base station (BS) is typically referred to as the R6 interface (e.g., a reference point between BS and ASN). As shown in FIG. 1, the R6 interface is conventionally provided as a unicast IP transport mechanism. As such, the R6 interface as well as the R4 interface (which defines a reference point between ASN and other ASNs for mobility across ASNs) may be crossed by a user plane that is transported inside a tunnel. The tunnel is typically a generic routing encapsulation (GRE) tunnel.
For MCBCS, the architecture of FIG. 1 may be considered inefficient since the last hop transport link to the BS may carry identical and synchronized data flow to various base station sectors (e.g., BS1, BS2, BS3, etc.) in a MCBCS zone. Thus, if there are several sectors per site, or if the transport to the base stations is daisy-chained as shown in FIG. 1, the flows via unicast may mean that identical packets are sent over the last hop transport in several independent and synchronized copies resulting in inefficient usage of resources.
Accordingly, it may be desirable to provide an improved mechanism for providing last hop transport links in an ASN.